Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computerized control device and a computer-implemented method for controlling a product processing plant. The present invention relates in particular to a computerized control device and a computer-implemented method for controlling a product processing plant, in particular a print product processing plant, which comprises a collecting plant with a conveyor and a plurality of feeders for preparing product collections of flat products, in particular print products, supplied by the feeders.
Background Art
With the known collecting plants for collecting (in the broader sense) product collections of multiple products by combining, inserting or collecting (in the narrower sense), the various products from multiple feeders arranged serially are supplied sequentially to a conveyor, where they are combined, inserted or collected on respective collection carriers such as grippers, for example. In print product processing plants, the products comprise flat print products of differing thicknesses in particular, but also other flat products, such as data media or other newspaper inserts, for example. The product collections prepared from the products are supplied sequentially by the conveyor to one or more further processing plants, for example, for inserting, stretch wrapping, stapling, gluing, cutting and/or stacking. Typically a collecting plant equipped for collating products is designed with a rotating conveyor. A rotating conveyor permits the conveyance of products, product collections and/or collection carriers along a closed curve and/or path cyclically past the product supplying feeders. Certain products and/or product collections may thus run through several cycles on the revolving conveyor, so that they are fed several times into the process of collating before being transferred to a further processing plant. For shipment by truck or other transport vehicles, for example, the product collections are stacked to form packages at stacking stations and then are banded. Usually multiple production sequences are necessary for one type of collection for a delivery route. The feeders must be loaded manually with the products to be fed before and during production by operating personnel of the product processing plant. To do so, the products are typically brought to the feeders on pallets and are supplied in stacks or bundles from the pallet to the respective feeder by the operating personnel. In product processing plants having a larger number of feeders, for example, several dozen or more than a hundred, and production to be carried out on these feeders to prepare several different types of product collections from optionally an even larger number of different products to be supplied, for example, more than a hundred or several hundred different newspaper inserts, for multiple shipping routes, each having multiple product collections of different types of collection, the production time is lengthened substantially when new occupancy of feeders during production leads to production interruptions. These setup times for the feeders may contribute toward substantial delays in the intended shipment times.